Since I stopped drinking me and my husband have been playing a lot of Scrabble. So much so that we’ve got a tournament going. Best of 3 games means a series, and I’m currently winning the series 11-4. God I love winning! Half the fun is C’s half pretend upset – ‘what’s the score now……Goddamnit!’. On holiday in beautiful Cornwall this week, we’re playing 3 games a night and I’m noticing how much of a metaphor for life the game is.

I’m prone to sudden switches of mood. A prime time is when I get home from work. If anything is not quite how I expect it to be I go from calm and relaxed to irritable, grumpy and unreasonable. A glass of wine would knock it on the head but now I’m having to figure out other ways. I think it comes from the anxiety of coming home from school not knowing what I would find. A clean house, tea cooking and mum smiling; or an almost empty bottle of gin with mum and her drinking buddy slumped over it, unwashed pots from breakfast in the sink. Anyway, C often asks me ‘What is it you’re telling yourself?’ (He’s a therapist if you hadn’t guessed!). I know what he’s getting at – what’s the automatic negative thought behind the emotion? What are you thinking that’s suddenly made your world appear so full of shit and deeply unsatisfying? It’s hard to catch those pesky thoughts and beliefs though when the bad mood has taken centre stage. Whilst playing Scrabble I could see them in action. A simplified version of life with the same processes at work shaping the direction of travel.

There are two variables beyond your control in Scrabble, the board and what letters you pick. The bit you can control is what you do with them but more importantly how you think about them. Do you see obstacles or opportunity? Whenever I focused on having shit letters ( 5 I s goddamnit!), or was thinking of throwing them in I invariably missed a place I could go or made a bad play. C did the same. The more we complained the worse it got. When I was more curious and open minded; treating each set of letters as a puzzle to be solved in its own right then I found the words and the scores.

Last night we were playing the 3rd deciding game. I was about 20 points ahead, all the letters were drawn and I knew C must have the Z and the Q. Both worth 10 points. I was nervous. It was his turn. He played Zinque – a made up word, laughing that I’d won anyway. ‘You could have done Zen for 22 points’ I said. ‘Yeah but then I’m left with the Q and nowhere to put that’. ‘You could have made Qi here for triple letter score’ I pointed out. ‘So I could’ve won?!’ C exclaimed. Yes he could. What stopped him winning was his focus on the barriers instead of looking for the opportunities. He’d mentally thrown in the towel and already decided he’d lost. To be fair this isn’t how C approaches life in the main at all. He just gave me the clearest Scrabble example! I’m the one who does that in real life, in spite of having a pretty damn good set of letters most of the time.

I read this morning about Dan Sullivan’s concept of ‘The Gap and the Gain’. Most of us focus on what we haven’t got, what we haven’t achieved, what went wrong – this is living in the gap. Happiness is not right now but when I have a better job, the kids are older, I’ve retired etc etc. Living in the gain is to focus on what is and how far you have come rather than where you are going. Judging yourself by what you have achieved relative to where you were, rather than where you would ideally want to be. Living in the gap is giving those automatic negative thoughts free rein to run around your mind so all you can see is what’s wrong. It’s fixing your mindset and closing doors to change. Or making changes and still being unsatisfied. Life never feeling quite good enough. Alcohol promises a temporary escape but really it’s rocket fuel for the gap mentality.

So I’m going to try and cultivate my best Scrabble attitude in my daily life. Each day is a new set of letters and it’s up to me what I make of them. Appreciate life as it’s happening, rather than focusing on what could be different. See opportunities not obstacles. Next time I come home from work I’ll take a moment to be appreciative before I open the door so I can enjoy what’s waiting behind it for what it is.

If I’m going to write about my past; unpick the reasons why I drank so much for so long; then my mum is going to be the leading lady – Judy Garland to my Liza Minnelli, cast as an unpredictable drunken purveyor of chaos and she’s not going to look good frankly. I feel bad about this. My mum is still alive, about to celebrate her 81st birthday and I love her dearly. I want to share the good stuff more than the bad right now. Maybe the bad will just appear in passing, maybe not at all – I don’t really have a plan for this other than writing this right now. So here are 5 of the reasons I’m grateful to have my mum in my life today.

My mum is great company. She can make any situation fun; find the humour, taking the proverbial out of herself or others when gleefully recounting a story. Prone to exaggeration we’re never quite sure how much is true. The more we laugh the more she embellishes it.

My mum is great in a crisis. Through my divorce she managed to be emotionally supportive of me; naming my unhappiness when I couldn’t myself and encouraging me to do what was right for me; whilst being kind and respectful to my ex and being there for our girls.

My mum is a wonderful granny. When the girls were little she came to stay every month so we could have a night out together and a lie in. She would go to the park, bake, play and cuddle whilst we slept off our hangovers! Now the girls are young adults they still love to spend time with her. Knowing they have her to turn to if they don’t want to come to me is a big comfort.

My mum is my No 1 supporter. I remember getting a rosette at a horse show and my mum was cheering so much the guy handing them out commented “I see you’ve brought your fan club”. She listens to my moans and groans, my hopes and dreams; encouraging and enthusing me. When we were younger she used to say ‘Aim for the stars, if you don’t reach them you might still get the moon’.

My mum has been sober for 8 years now. She moved closer to me 9 years ago just as her health started to deteriorate. Alcoholic cardiomyopathy misdiagnosed as asthma for a long time. When I ask her why she stopped she simply says ‘I realised it was going to kill me’. She did it on her own, quietly, no fuss. I’m in awe. Sobriety has definitely brought her more years in her life but also more life in her years. She’s learnt to paint and crochet; and had 4 celebrations for her 80th birthday last year with family and friends. She’s supportive of my efforts, without judging or criticising me. She is my inspiration.

Thank you mum for all that you are and all that you do – I love you💖.

For the last 6 weeks I’ve been feeling very low in every sense of the word. Low on energy, low on motivation and low in mood. It’s almost 3 months since I had a drink, and I’m very aware that it was at this point last year that I decided I would try moderation again. This year I’m not taken in by the idea that drinking will improve things but I am feeling the loss. Not of alcohol per se but of who I was. I started drinking regularly in my late teens like most people. I remember being very uncomfortable around alcohol and drunk people. Growing up with an alcoholic mum meant my radar for the transition between tipsy and drunk in others was extremely sensitive, and it signalled danger. My then boyfriend suggested I’d better find a way to get used to it as everyone at Uni got drunk. I took his advice. I soon learnt that being drunk myself dealt with that nicely. I duly went off to Uni and started to have fun, seemingly freed up from that anxious attention to others that I’d needed growing up. I wasn’t like my mum; I drank to enjoy myself, to have fun. I partied long and hard and I liked it. I met the friends that I still have today – we’ve been there for each other through all life’s ups and downs. Every occasion oiled with alcohol. Motherhood didn’t stop me, nor did my career. In my mind I was functional, sociable and having a good time.

Now over 35 years later I’m seeing the past a little differently as well as feeling a lot less sure of myself in the present. I don’t want to go out and when I do I feel anxious and awkward like my teenage self before alcohol. I’m ok on a 1:1 – it’s groups – particularly my good friends that’s hardest. My drunk spotting radar is turned on full, and when things start to get loud or messy I don’t want to be there. Then I get to thinking about all the times I’ve been that person and how others most likely saw me. Having a good time or being loud and obnoxious? Coupled with this intense judgement of people I actually really love, as well as myself; is the feeling of missing out, not being in the gang, being boring. ‘You’ll never have fun again’ whispers the wine witch as I’m checking my watch to see if I can leave yet.

So I’ve been pretty unsociable and pretty miserable. I keep thinking about mistakes I’ve made; impulsive decisions where the consequences only now seem important. The money I’ve wasted. The flaky parenting. Recognising that all along alcohol has been the real centre of attention and how much it got in the way of everything else. The what ifs and the could have beens. I’m not usually one for regrets, so I’m in unfamiliar territory. The loss is both what I could have been without alcohol and who I was with alcohol.

I don’t want to be the drinking me again but I’m not sure of sober me yet either. I know sober me is enjoying work more without the hangovers. Sober me is getting on better with my daughters. Sober me loves Scrabble. Sober me is smoking a lot and eating tons of chocolate.

This week I’m on holiday in Cornwall – just me, my husband and the dogs. I don’t have to socialise or see anyone. I can just be and allow the grief. Like a caterpillar in it’s cocoon I’m waiting to emerge anew.

The good news about quitting drinking is you get in touch with your feelings; and the bad news is you get in touch with your feelings as many a reformed addict will tell you. When you’ve used alcohol for years to keep those pesky emotions firmly locked away in the psychological equivalent of an escape room it shouldn’t be a surprise that removing the lock of alcohol creates some problems. Feelings that don’t belong to the here and now but feel like they do, can cause havoc with your current life, relationships and perceptions of same. Trying to disentangle the real meaning and the real source is not easy. The initial joy of quitting is replaced by self-doubt, questioning and intense reactions to anything and everything. My husband only has to take longer than a millisecond to respond to me and I feel abandoned, unheard and unloved. The more I berate him for it, the further he withdraws confirming my deep-seated belief that I am not loveable. This morning we managed to get through one of these exchanges and finish up with a hug. That’s usually what I need but I’m not very good at communicating it, preferring to see his failure to mind read and second guess me as further evidence of his and my own failings. It’s easier to show my anger than my vulnerability and pain. So what can I do differently? How do I learn to respond within an emotionally appropriate range, without attaching all this baggage?

Understanding where the baggage originates is important. I sometimes liken therapy to opening up cupboards in our mind, crammed full of stuff that spills out and has to be slowly sorted; carefully looking through it; throwing away what you don’t need, and eventually neatly putting away what you want to keep, with the door now closing easily. However, finding new ways to manage my emotions, past and present in the here and now is the key task that will help me off the hamster wheel of addiction; allowing feelings, not suppressing, not projecting on to others and not turning them into self-loathing.

In the moment I need to be able to clock that the emotions don’t belong to now and not respond as if they do; and find a way of telling myself that in a split second. Breathe and count to 6. Keep that mouth shut. Neuroscience and attachment theory teach us that these implicit reactions come from our early experiences, and danger in any form has the biggest influence on what we pay attention to and what we don’t. That makes sense as staying alive is the unconscious priority for all of us. The trouble is these automatic responses are from the unthinking part of our brain, the subcortical regions, primed to sense any hint of danger and to activate our fight/flight. After an unregulated outburst, guilt and shame ensue or an attempt to justify: ‘He doesn’t love you anymore, things have changed, I’m right to be upset etc’. Both perpetuate the cycle – increasing your self or other hatred and filling up the negative emotion tank ready to burst all over again. Without the lock of alcohol, it’s a pretty regular occurrence! I have to learn to accept my negative feelings and remember that they will pass. I have to unlearn my old ways, or figure out which ones I can keep.

 This process is complicated by having to suppress them in order to function. I can’t allow my feelings when I’m at work, or rather it doesn’t go well when I do! I have to help others deal with their emotions; contain their anxiety, offer hope and ways forward. I have to be reflective, open and measured. All of this helps me to an extent; being in my more functional mode does lift my spirits and I love what I do; but it is part of the disconnect from the murkier parts of myself. When the murky stuff is bubbling up to the surface then it’s harder to be that functional person. Both parts of me are real and compliment each other. Without my demons I wouldn’t be as good at my job; I wouldn’t have as much empathy and understanding. Without my job I wouldn’t have the self-esteem to say I’m good at my job! Integrating these parts, not judging or valuing one above the other and not blocking either out is the task I’m facing now. To paraphrase the wonderful children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – I can’t go under it, I can’t go over it, I can’t go round it – I have to go through it.

Yoga and meditation really do help calm my mind and body. When I’m really low I struggle to do them, a perverse self-denial. I rarely denied myself a drink! Sometimes it’s hard to be kind to yourself and allow yourself things that help. Self-destruction is an easier path to choose than self- care. I allowed myself some comfort this morning and I’m writing this now. Small steps. I’ll post this now then go do some yoga!

I’m quite new to my relative sobriety, finding my way in a world where I’m used to being the helper not the helped. I’m thinking there might be other people out there like me, scared to come out because of their professions so if I reach you and you feel less alone then I’ve helped us both.

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